don’t shoot the messenger: gun violence in America
I’m starting to wonder if we’re ever going to get a grip on gun violence.
In the past few days alone, a one-year-old baby was shot in the face and killed in his stroller, and a 107-year-old man was shot dead by police after a shoot-out in his home.
Here in Boston, there have been 123 shootings in the five months since the Marathon Bombing.
created by Jamarhl Crawford for Blackstonian.com. Image grab from Sept. 8, 2013.
It feels scary for me to speak out about gun violence and gun control, because the “other side” is the type who pack heat when they go to Starbucks, say, or to church.
How “free” are you when you feel you must carry a gun everywhere to feel safe? That doesn’t feel like freedom to me.
Not to mention, you look ridiculous.
I hope to God that’s decaf
Guns, knives and other weapons are magnets for violence. They draw bad energy toward you. Why keep something so negative in your home, around your children?
When my family was stuck inside for the city-wide lock-down during that terrible week after the Boston Marathon bombing, I got a few choice comments on my Facebook page along the lines of “You liberals must want to rush out and buy some guns now so you’ll feel safer.”
Um, not really!
As one letter to the Financial Times stated shortly after Newtown,
“…When everyone has a gun then, indeed, everyone is individually more powerful, but collectively everyone is less safe. All this suggests that ‘Americans are getting fonder and fonder of firearms’ because first, they feel insecure and threatened, and second, they make the mistake of thinking that the very real power bestowed on individuals by firearms makes them collectively more secure and less threatened. It does not.”
How many assault rifles and rounds of ammo does one need? If you want a gun, at least agree to a thorough background check. You have a driver’s license, right? It’s time we, on a national level, license and run checks on people who want firearms. Someone who wouldn’t qualify to buy a gun in Massachusetts shouldn’t be allowed to buy firearms in New Hampshire and bring them back here to kill people. Someone who would qualify wouldn’t be any worse off, while everyone would benefit.
I understand that guns and hunting are part of American culture. My son is fascinated with guns and can identify most makes and models on sight. As a matter of fact, while I was working on this post, I found this on my iPhone after he borrowed it:
But…
Haven’t enough children been shot to death or gravely injured–this month?!
The arms race. The counter now reads over 8,000. StopHandgunViolence.org billboard on the Mass Pike in Boston.
Do you honestly believe that the overwhelming level of gun violence we’re living with now is what the Founding Fathers envisioned for our society when they wrote the Second Amendment?
trigger finger
Gun violence costs America in countless ways. Besides the obvious health care costs ($17 million has been spent so far on Aurora survivors alone), think of all the lost economic value of Americans killed and maimed by firearms. What if one of the children shot in Newtown or Boston had discovered a cure for cancer, or had been our next Steve Jobs? What would that have been worth?
I keep thinking about the aptly named Antoinette Tuff, the bookkeeper who stopped a 20-year man from going on a killing spree at an elementary school in Georgia last month—by talking to him, not by shooting him.
Have you listened to Antoinette’s 911 call?
“It’s okay, baby. I love you!”
Without Antoinette, we probably would have had another Sandy Hook Elementary on our hands. Or worse. Imagine if the teachers or school administrators had been armed. Don’t kid yourself: it would have escalated quickly into a chaotic bloodbath.
Love is the answer, baby. Not more guns.
Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat™.
thank you, Jueseppi! meanwhile…another week, another shooting
I like that billboard. They need one in every city.
hi Dani – that would be interesting! I wonder if it would matter though. People see and believe what they choose to perceive. Which is why Americans continue to be strangely and rather stupidly stuck when it comes to this issue of guns. Fear drives people to arm themselves…which causes more violence and more fear. I thought that DC trauma doctor’s plea for the nation to do something about gun violence after the Navy Yard shooting was pretty profound…I’m just not feeling very hopeful at the moment that anything will change in the near future. Especially since nothing was done after Newtown. I guess not enough of us — or our children — have been shot yet. It reminds me of what someone in Syria said at the start of their civil war…that it would take millions of deaths before the violence there stopped. Hopefully that is not the case here.
Reblogged this on idealisticrebel.
hi there – thank you so much for reblogging my post!
Background checks? If only all the people who had guns got them from a shop. Unfortunately, gangs and others, don’t bother with legal purchases. I agree, background checks would help, if you could believe the background check to begin with but I think getting rid of guns is the only real answer. Everything else can be manipulated and guns can be bought on the black-market and from someone’s trunk. The control issue is massive. There’s money in guns and money seems to always find a way to be made. We have a problem with control…theWar on Drugs? Has it made a difference? The War on Guns? Would that make a change? I don’t know…when people want something they find a way to get it and our laws aren’t written in a way to stop things from happening. One reason is that the laws usually work agains a certain segment of the population. Cigarettes and alcohol are drugs that cause thousands upon thousands of deaths each year, but nothing is done about them. Rich people will always have guns and drugs, well they will have anything they want because they live outside the law. Pollution is taking a huge toll on our lives but no one really does anything about the stuff huge industries pour into our water supply or shoot out into the atmosphere. MONEY POWEr…if you have them…you can do anything you want. If you don’t have them, then the rules and laws apply to you.
hi hon…thanks for your thoughtful comment, and for reading my blog. I just saw I inspired your post today 🙂
I felt very heavy energetically, and very depressed after writing this post. It’s hard not to feel despair about what is happening in our society. We feel fragmented and disconnected, and I feel that is a huge part of the violence that’s happening in our culture. Besides the obsession and control issues about money!
You asked, “How free are we when we feel we have to pack a gun everywhere we go?” I have a similar question: “How free are we when we have to look at somebody carrying a gun everywhere we go?” I am always wondering if I am looking at Mr. Normal Citizen when I see somebody carrying a gun in public or am I looking at Mr. Nutwad who can go off and shoot me without either notice or hesitation?
yikes! thank God we don’t have random people walking around carrying guns openly around here. Ugh!